"Haeretici typus, et descriptio": Heretical and Anti-Heretical Imagemaking in Jan David, SJ’s Veridicus Christianus

• In Event: Heresy and Heterodoxy I: Visual Definitions

Abstract

Jan David’s catechetical emblem book Veridicus Christianus (1601) opens with five chapters on the nature of human sin, chief amongst which the sin of idolatry, followed by a complementary series of ten chapters on heresy, the most heinous form of idolatry, and on the chief means of combatting its pernicious effects — namely, anti-heretical imagemaking. Heresy must needs be challenged by recourse to images, argues David, and to shore up this point he traces the lineage of anti-heretical imagemaking back to Moses, who was taught by God to construe leprosy as a typus haereseos (‘image of heresy’), and then to Christ, who renewed the Mosaic image by sustituting for it the more vivid parabolic image of a ravening wolf in sheep’s clothing. My paper examines David’s bipartite notion of the heretical image, its body and soul, as a prelude to exploring the fundamental opposition he adduces between heretical and anti-heretical imagemaking.

Author

• Walter Simon Melion, Emory University